Washington: Scientists had discovered many ways to stimulate the body’s own anti-aging protections maybe with a pill, which could battle various diseases at a time.

The study, which is published in the journal ‘Cell’, helps explicating why animals fed very light foods live a longer life, but it also provides new ways to aspire to reproduce the outcomes of these diets using a pill in place of hunger.

David Sinclair, a pathologist at Harvard Medical School who helped lead the research, said, “What we are talking about is potentially having one pill that prevents and even cures many diseases at once.”

Mr. Sinclair helped detected a company that is working on drugs, based on this study, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.

The key is a family of enzymes called sirtuins, which are controlled by genes known as SIRT1, SIRT2 and so on.

Last year, scientists revealed that exciting SIRT1 can aid yeast cells live longer.

Sinclair, working jointly with fellow workers at his company, at Cornell University in New York and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, keyed out the activities of two additional sirtuin genes called up SIRT3 and SIRT4.

They discovered the enzymes controlled by these genes help protecting the mitochondria, little organs inside of cells that supply their power.

In a videotaped statement, Sinclair said, “These two genes, SIRT3 and SIRT4, they make proteins that go into mitochondria. ... These are little energy packs inside our cells that are very important for staying healthy and youthful and, as we age, we lose them and they get less efficient. They are also very important for keeping the cells healthy and alive when they undergo stress and DNA damage, as we undergo every day during the aging process.”

In other studies, Sinclair and fellows have detected that even though the rest of a cell is shattered the nucleus and other parts can still work if the mitochondria are active.

His group found that fasting advances levels of an additional protein known as NAD. This, in order, actuates SIRT3 and SIRT4 in the cell mitochondria and these help keep the mitochondria vigorous and fresh.

"We’ve reason to believe now that these two genes may be potential drug targets for diseases associated with aging. Theoretically, we can envision a small molecule (pill) that can increase levels of NAD, or SIRT3 and SIRT4 directly, in the mitochondria. Such a molecule could be used for many age-related diseases. Diseases like heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis -- even things like cataracts. What we are aiming to do is to find the body's natural processes that can slow down aging and treat these diseases,” Sinclair added

Sirtris is already working on such drugs. It has an experimental pill called SRT501, which it is testing in Phase 2a trials in patients with type-2 diabetes.

In a statement, Dr. Christoph Westphal, chief executive officer of Sirtris, stated, “These exciting new data further validate sirtuins as attractive targets for drug development to treat diseases of aging.”